Hans Hermann Hoppe : about this crisis

   Hans Hermann Hoppe : about this crisis

Another objection: What about the new internet-based detractors of the state, such as "Occupy" or the "Pirates," who demand transparency and participation, without immediately condemning the state and democracy in their entirety?

Hoppe : The "Occupy" movement consists of economic ignoramuses who fail to understand that the banks’ dirty tricks, which they rightly deplore, are possible only because there is a state-licensed central bank that acts as a “lender of last resort,” and that the current financial crisis therefore is not a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of statism. The "Pirates," with their demand for an unconditional basic income, are well on the way to becoming another "free beer for all" party. They have a single issue: criticism of "intellectual property rights" (IP rights), which could make them very popular—and earn them the enmity in particular of the music, film and pharmaceutical industries. But even there they are clueless wimps. They just need to google Stephan Kinsella. Then they’d see that IP has nothing to do with property, but rather with state privileges. IP allows the inventor (I) or ‘first maker’ of a product—a text, picture, song or whatever—to forbid all other people to replicate this product, or to charge them license fees, even if the replicator (R) thereby uses his own property only (and does not take away any of I’s property). This way, I is elevated to the status of co-owner of R’s property. This shows: IP rights are not property but, on the contrary, are an attack on property and therefore  completely illegitimate.